Steps to Build Trust, Create Opportunity and Become Top of Mind with Your Audience

Marketers across the world are well versed with the lexicon of the moment of truth that signifies the time span for which the buyer and the seller come face to face.

The inconvenient rationale behind the nomenclature of the marketing jargon is accurately mirrored in all those marketplace coordinates of time, space and scale that require the buyer and the seller to engage in a hold barred conversation.

Booth staffers at trade shows are no strangers to the challenges that unfold before them when they engage in such moments of truth.

As such, therefore, it may appear to be only subversive if not paradoxical that Google, the internet marketing giant has proposed a new hypothesis of the zero moments of truth. What does this business lesson from Google on zero-moment of truth imply for booth staffers and sales executive exhibiting at trade shows?

It means that between the moment when the buyer researches a product and then buys it, there is a momentary gap when he may go astray, deviate away from the brand and decide to abort the transacting process.

What leads the buyer away from a brand at a trade show? Is it a lack of trust? Is it the lack of physical evidences?

Is it about the buyer questioning the value addition of the product or service?

Moment of truth encounters at trade shows is replete with challenges to trust building, elevator pitches, ice breaking and thus, the creation of new avenues for business development. Here are some of the major such challenges and corresponding means, ideas and techniques to resolve those.

1. Integrate Branding with Quality Certifications on the Store Front

During the limited time span of the event, the trade show booth is in itself a storefront. The first major psychological challenge to building trust and thus bridging the gap is the fact that visitors take cognizance of the fact that both the trade show and the trade show booth put up are momentary; makeshift and thus not long lasting.

The implicit rationale is that a long-lasting business relationship cannot be premised on a temporary paradigm. Integrate tradeshow displays with quality certifications at the entrance leading to the front view to the visitor.

An ISO certification, a government body accreditation or a major research finding must share space with the brand logo on the storefront.

2. Create a Wall Showcasing Social Innovation

What makes the market tick? It is trust. In a world occupied by shareholder value creation and aggressive marketing campaigns, visitors at trade shows are smart enough to see through ploys to hard sell products and services and thus disengage from pursuits that exclude them.

Traversing the distance from being an exhibitionist to being an exhibitor brand calls for showcasing social innovation. Create a separate wall to map people’s pain points and display solutions, not just products and services.

Explore trade show display ideas to reflect on how the brand creates value for society, resolves challenges and makes lives easier.

3. Use Immersive Technologies to Demonstrate Value Offerings

Immersive technologies are not just the new buzzwords for trade show marketers. Immersive technologies like 3D filmography, 360-degree videography, augmented reality and virtual reality can go a long way in augmenting trust factor, especially in industry verticals like real estate, automobile, fashion and even education.

The Said Business School, Oxford University, for example, deploys 360-degree videography to offer a virtual tour of its campus premises to global aspirants, thereby taking them through not just the infrastructure of the business school, but student life in general, thus triggering ambitions of the aspirational segment of ambitious students.

4. Leverage Video Content Marketing with Subtitles and Background Scores

What is the difference between a sponsored advertisement and a documentary styled video?

Go multilingual with the video marketing at trade shows and allow for the background noises to play in the background of the video to give it an authentic look and feel at trade shows.

When subtitles are visible, it makes a lot more impact on the psyche of the visitors, even if the audio volumes are turned off. The usage of noises in the background score of a video adds to the element of authenticity and lends the feel of a sleek, real and non-glamorous documentary and synchronizes with the concept of social selling stated just previously.

5. Synchronize Colour Coding Across the Booth Rentals, Exhibits and Dress Codes of Booth Staffers

No, we are not talking of a uniform for the trade show booth staffers alone. We are talking about synchronizing the color coding across the booth rentals, the exhibits, the furniture inside the booth premises and the dress codes to leverage color coding as a symbolic system to resonate with the vibes of the brand.

Particularly, synchronize the brand image, value and personality with the ambiance inside the trade show booth. If possible take it a step further by giving away freebies and small tokens of the same color coding to the visitors.

In the final diagnosis, there are two key takeaways here. First, remember that each item at the trade show booth is a touch point. Leverage visual sensory experiences to create brand memories that last long.

Second, reduce the differences among the touch points such as the booth rentals, exhibits, videos, displays, furniture and the dress codes of the booth staffers as much as possible to build trust, create new opportunities and be on top of the minds of the visitors.